James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire

Anyone with a Nintendo 64 played Goldeneye 007. Goldeneye was like gaming gold (No pun intended) to a lacklustre adult genre for the Nintendo 64 system. Face it: Nintendo has horrible records when it comes to games aimed at people over the age of 15, so any game for Nintendo that comes out that's better than "Conker's Bad Fur Day" is a blessing.

However, Rare and EA (The two companies that have been making the James Bond 007 Shooter series) have had bad records otherwise when it comes to the franchise. I got The World is Not Enough for the Nintendo 64 as soon as I could, hoping to god that it would be as good as Goldeneye- and was dissapointed. I'm pretty sure that Goldeneye was good for three simple reasons:
1. It was an game that wasnt immature and was aimed at adults, and
2. It was simple, and
3. It was the first game to feature multiplayer Splitscreen
And, of course, after Goldeneye, everyone started copying it, and the awesomeness was gone and replaced with a "Dull Roar" of sorts. Frankly, TWINE was never as good as Goldeneye, and of course, by definition, Agent Under Fire was not gonna be worth it. But I got it anyway.



The game is like every other James Bond game on the face of the earth, except on the Next Gen console. Aim, shoot, use gadgets that are pretty much context-dependent and useless, and steam through the game. Naturally, James Bond still has the ability to take a million bullets before dying, as well as the ability to carry all sorts of gadgets, weapons, armor, and general potpurri.

The game itself is an embarassment considering all of the other shooter games with physics engines out there. There is gravity, of course, but don't expect magical response from anything beyond that. Frankly speaking: Everything is static except for the enemies and "Things you can use". This is nothing new to run-of-the-mill shooters, because its so much easier to develop a level that's static than to do the Halo or Half Life thing and make it somewhat interactive.

The weapons are, of course, your typical James Bond weapons. Frankly, I've never been impressed with any weapons James Bond ever uses, because they always tend to fall into the following catagories:
- The Pistol
- The Revolver
- The Shotgun
- The Assault Rifle
- The Sniper
- The Machine Gun
- The Rocket Launcher

Anything beyond that, or a mix of the above, is seemingly beyond EA's comprehension. Even a M4 with an optional Grenade Launcher would break the monotony, but then again, as I said about the static environments above, this basically falls under the catagory of the "Budget" shooter. I know the list above seems like a lot, but it always seems the same in these kinds of games: Get the Rocket Launcher and pwn anything, get the Sniper or the Machine gun if you can't get that. Its dissapointing, to be blunt.



The driving and/or other "Action" elements in this game, a major selling point of it when it came out, are not as exciting as they are made to seem. The driving element is purely annoying, whereas the rail-gunish action parts feel like they lack something. However, this is all up to your discretion: I like my driving sims in my driving games and my shooting sims in my shooting games. Sure, games like Halo mix these up well, but this one is like oil and water, and beating this game might be a challenge for someone who sucks at the driving mechanics.

The multiplayer aspect somewhat saves this game. Of course, like above, you always run for the sniper/rocket/machine gun, but it still is somewhat fun in this game. A real fun thing to do, while somewhat lame inandof itself, is to equip the "Hooks" (Somewhat like the CS mod of the same name) on this Train level. Essentially, you and your friends use the hooks and possibly low gravity to jump over the moving trains and fight each other (I prefer with just hands, to make it stupider). Of course, you have to think, when you have to be original to make a multiplayer game fun on the first try, that's a bad sign. Also dissapointing is the fact that this game doesnt feature bots, like the N64 game- suprising considering we're on Next Gen systems, and it isnt such a leap to program decent AI.



Overall, I give this game one star. There are so many other decent console shooters (I think they all suck, but regardless) that would fit the bill of this game much more decently. This game would perfectly fit the bill, however, of a kid that's too young to play some of the more violent shooters on the market, mainly because its "Cleaner" than most other shooter games.

1 star(s) out of 5

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